Susan Sparks: Resurrection biscuits

Wednesday

Ganny, as we called her, lived in a tiny little town in South Carolina. When we’d visit, the aroma of good things cooking would float through her screen porch and greet us — things like creamed corn, collard greens, and, hopefully, cornbread. I say hopefully, because the one thing Ganny could not cook was biscuits.

Lord, have mercy.

She was not a big believer in things like baking powder. On those ominous days when she would decide to bake biscuits, she would open the door of her wood stove and pull out what looked like a tray of toasty hot shot-puts. My uncle used to joke that if you dropped those biscuits on the floor, they would wake the dead. Thus, their nickname: resurrection biscuits.

As Easter rolls around each year, I think about Ganny and those sad little resurrection biscuits. Scary as they were, they can offer us an important Easter message: Like biscuits without baking powder, life without resurrection can be heavy and flat.

We tend to think of the Easter message as one for the end of life, but I think we need the Easter message right now, because as many of us know, death can come long before the end of life.

How many people do you know who are walking this earth physically alive but spiritually dead? Maybe you are one of them. How easily life can beat us down! It’s like the story of the little boy with his head in his hands, staring at his school book, saying, “I wish my arithmetic was done and that I was married and dead.”

Sometimes, it is hard to keep going. Oh, it’s easy to celebrate resurrection on a glorious Easter Sunday, but what about the next day, when the alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m. and our spirits sink? Where is the resurrection then?

• Where is the resurrection when we work night and day in a thankless job and yet find ourselves deeper in debt? • Where is the resurrection when our child gets caught in an ugly cycle of drugs and alcohol, and we watch him or her slip away? • Where is the resurrection when we wake up one morning and realize nothing matters to us anymore? • Where is the resurrection when at the end of life, our family and friends are all gone, and we are left alone to negotiate a world that does not honor its old ones?

Where is the resurrection then? It’s not just resurrection after death we’re talking about; it’s resurrection during life. Like biscuits made without baking powder, we need life’s missing ingredients back.

Life has many great truths, like we see in the words of Will Rogers: “Never slap a man chewing tobacco.” Or, a truth appropriate for early April, when you put “the” and the word “IRS” together, you get “theirs.”

Here’s another great truth in life: Deep down, the human spirit yearns for joy and lightness. It yearns to soar. And the key to this joy is already in our midst. Just as Mary recognized the risen Christ when he spoke her name in the garden, so, too, we have that spark of hope in our hearts just waiting to be claimed.

For everyone out there who feels that their dreams have been destroyed, their hopes dashed, their spirits crushed, here is the good news of Easter morning: The risen Christ can take our flat, heavy hearts and raise them to new heights. He can raise them so that our spirits are not stuck on the ground, dictated by human pain or disappointment. He can raise them so that our spirits are not mired in a tomb.

Easter brings each of us a second chance — an opportunity to start again. All we need to do is tap those missing ingredients of hope and new life, so that like hot fluffy biscuits, our hearts can rise up and soar free.

— A trial lawyer turned stand-up comedian and Baptist minister, Rev. Susan Sparks is the senior pastor of Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City and the author of Laugh Your Way to Grace and Preaching Punchlines. Contact her through her email at revssparks@gmail.com, or her website, www.SusanSparks.com.